Business Management - All Posts - Ze'ev Ronen - Business Excellence

At one of the NGOs I am a member of, there is a mentoring program. The graduates mentor younger peers. The mentoring last for six months, for a few dozen participants. The mentoring is voluntarily, and each year we have more mentors than we require. The organization has other social activities, involving young adults who live in Israel's periphery, and we don't lack volunteers.

Yossi called me, introducing himself as an investigator of cybercrime. He asked me if I'd been the victim of cybercrime in the past year.

While bike riding with a group of friends, A. and H. began a heated argument. As I got closer to them I heard it was about a bike riding event that took place many years ago, and they each had a different memory of. Each was convinced their memory was more accurate, and as often happens in such cases, they only listened to each other in order to quickly contradict each other. This wasn’t a dialogue, but two monologues.

Every year, CofaceBDI and The Marker magazine conduct a survey, on the topic "the 100 best companies to work at in Israel". The survey had about 150 thousand participants, and also uses internal surveys by the above companies. The survey then asked 2,000 participants to rank the parameters according to their importance.

Work meetings take up time, and it's often wasted time. But there are also efficient meetings, that give a sense of purpose and a drive for change. I assume many of you are among those whose experience with meetings is that they're a waste of time. You leave every meeting frustrated, and have learned to stay quiet to make the meeting go faster.

I once met with a CEO of a big organization we very much wanted to work with. From the beginning I looked at him with an encouraging smile. He answered in the same optimistic spirit. We grabbed a cup of coffee and settled in the meeting room, opening with some small talk. He mentioned he likes to listen to a certain radio program, of which I am also a frequent listener, and shared his opinions of it, with which I agreed.

If you have a convenience store at a gas station, you need to stock a number of essential items customers might suddenly need, or buy impulsively when they stop to fill up. Nobody does their weekly grocery shop at a gas station.

One of the questions I routinely ask managers is, how much of their time they spend doing their employees’ jobs (putting out fires, problem solving, answering questions). Most, almost all, say they spend 70% to 95% of their time at the operational level. A level which includes mostly activities which could be delegated, or have officially been delegated.

Statistics show that 70% of all unemployed people in Israel during the third Coronavirus quarantine were women. The lack of symmetry between men and women in unemployment statistics has gotten worse over the pandemic.

One of the first stages of personal coaching is identifying personal goals. Not defining, but identifying. We don’t choose pretty words and decide those are our values only because they look good. Personal values are an inherent part of us.

When you get into a cab, the first question the driver asks you is - where are you going? You probably always have an answer to that. After all, you wouldn't get in a cab without a destination in mind. Yet I meet people, and even businesses, with no goals. And without goals, you can’t have purposeful progress.

While hiking the Israel Trail near Dimona, we often use Patrick’s services, to drive us to the starting point, and from the end point. We found Patrick a year ago, when we were looking for a driver and compared prices. But now we don’t compare the prices Patrick quotes us with other offers. Patrick has excellent customer service. Comes anywhere, always a few minutes early, and is flexible enough to change the time if we’re early or late.

The Coronavirus hit us like an apocalyptic vision. I think that if anyone had raised the possibility of such an event, even in November 2019, we’d have all treated them like a fool. Despite the surprise, globally people adjusted remarkably quickly. It’s enough to look at the parallel development of vaccines, and their approval by health authorities, within 10 months, to understand the revolution in tends of behaviors and thought patterns that occurred over the last year.

I don’t know about your specific company, but usually the first step is layoffs. Most often, labor costs aren’t the biggest expense, but it always seems simplest, fastest, and easiest to fire employees - and if and when sales are back up, recruit new ones. Furthermore, we know there is always latent redundancy, so we assume any reduction in the workforce will lead to greater efficiency.

In the past, when I managed Osem-Nestle’s factory in Yokne’am, we often had improvement teams working with internal leaders. For four years, we had a yearly workshop teaching employees how to lead improvements teams. The woman leading these workshops then led and managed the improvement teams, and coached the leaders. After four years, we transitioned to doing that internally as well.

It might seem odd, but some businesses and people benefited from the global effects of the pandemic. For example, let's say you're a manufacturer of a niche product like facemasks, and suddenly it becomes the most sought after product worldwide, sold for exorbitant prices. It can seem as if luck fell out of the sky, into your lap. What will you do?

Javier is a young tour guide, Until recently, he had a lot of work. He speaks Spanish fluently, and as a result he had, among is other clients, many Birthright groups from South America.
And then came the Coronavirus, and Javier found himself without work, and with the realisation that life is unlikely to return to how it was anytime soon.

A medical start-up I worked with in the past faced a considerable schedule delay. I suggested the CEO display the company's goals and schedules in a prominent location, breakdown company goals to personal ones assigned to each managers, and thus delegate responsibility to them.

In my last article I discussed strategies for businesses during the Coronavirus crisis: the gazelle and the hedgehog strategies. When the gazelle senses danger it raises its head, looks around, and runs forward. At times it will change direction, but will always continue moving and keep its head up. 

My last article dealt with the question – how to approach the crisis in your business. Among other issues, I discussed employee retention vs. employment costs. In this article I'm going to take a big step forward, and present the opportunity this crisis offers you, to engage employees with company goals.

We can be sanguine about the Coronavirus or be concerned or frightened – but we can't ignore the dramatic effect this crisis has on the global economy. In this article I don’t intend to give instructions like those issued by the government, about crowds and the like. I write about the business aspect, with all the issues you should deal with.

One of the immediate and daily examples for this technique, also mentioned in the book, is shaving razors. Until 1971 only one blade was commonly used. Then Gillette released a razor with two blades: one pulls the hair and the second cuts it.
Later, they added a third, and even fourth, blades. I stopped at three blades.

At the time Moshe was the CEO of Eyal Optics, and I was just starting as the CEO of Shamir Optical Industries. Shamir Optical and Eyal Optics had a complex relationship. On the one hand Eyal were our clients. We supplied them with glass molds for manufacturing plastic multifocal lenses, and they owed us a lot of money. One the other hand, Eyal were our "home lab".

wonder of wonders, CEOs who aren’t machine-maintenance people, are sure they "know enough", or "know best", how to maintain the "human machines" in their company. And if not the CEO, then one of the executives will be able to do it, in addition to their regular job.

At first results seem great. Especially when before the authoritative manager there was an indecisive one. Now decisions are made quickly and everybody falls in line. But this kind of management suffocates the company. It suppresses positive initiatives and when the authoritative CEO makes a mistake no one will dare correct them or point out the possible harm.

We're nearing the end of 2019, have you prepared a work-plan (and budget) for 2020? Maybe you have a three-year or five-year plan? If the answer is no – this is the last chance to do so. And maybe you think work plans aren't necessary?

The kibbutz assembly needed to approve participation of a team from the company in a professional conference in Italy. I remember a heated debate. Travelling abroad was rare, and every trip was a cause for envy. In the assembly, a suggestion was raised – instead of one of the executives, "Sarah", a kibbutz member, will go, because she hadn’t been abroad yet.

In this part I mean to focus with more detail on each method, and see the differences between the levels of familiarity with the method and its use, and the success it generated. As you'll see, there are methods which are widely used but fail to generate success, while contrastingly there are methods which are rarely used, but the majority of managers who've used them report success.

I examined 13 well-known and proven management methods from all over the world, which I myself use, and asked the participants to rank them through three questions: familiarity with the method, experience with the method, and how successful it was for them.

I drew a big pyramid on the board, with him at the top, below him 8 VPs, and at the bottom 10,000 employees. I asked – how can you guarantee they'll efficiently produce quality products, if they aren’t engaged or invested in company goals?